Arnhem Land

We had the very exciting opportunity of going into Arnhem Land for a day. The Stone Country Festival is an event put on by the Oenpelli community and is open to visitors from outside Arnhem Land. The Aboriginal name for Oenpelli is Gunbalanya (and it has another longer name which I can't remember). We were particularly excited as one of our favourite Alison Lester books, 'Ernie dances the didgeridoo' was written by the author in conjunction with Gunbalanya Community School. In fact she had been there again until the day prior to us being there, and we were able to buy some artwork that she and the children had done together. She has also written 'Are we there yet?", a great children's book that we also brought with us on our trip.

Some of the elders performed a welcome ceremony. The ladies did the 'yam dance'. They also had a big rainbow serpent that looked a bit like a Chinese dragon. Jess unfortunately felt too unwell to do much, and spent the day being carried around.

The thing that interested Darcy and Isaac the most was the food. Some ladies dug a hole and lit a fire in it, then threw in some long white things that looked a bit like skinny kangaroo tails. I figured that wasn't so bad- we'd had kangaroo meat at home a few times. When they were cooked they were lifted from the fire and sliced into small sections. We each tried some, I tried to look cultured and enjoy it but just couldn't. Later when we saw thick, furry kangaroo tails being cooked in the fire I asked one of the ladies what the long thin things were. Kangaroo intestines. Mmmm!

They also cooked long necked turtles that had been dug up out of the mud from the flood plains. The meat from the turtles was tough but quite tasty. For lunch we had crocodile or buffalo meat sandwiches.

There were lots of displays from government organisations too. Darcy showed an unhealthy interest in joining the army, something I'm encouraging in the hope of turning him off the idea. We watched an artist do a dot painting of water spirits, which looked a bit like mermaids. In the evening we watched the fireworks. The boys had a ride on the dodgem cars- like we've never seen before! 50 screaming Aboriginal kids who somehow know how to drive very well, packed into each car, driving like maniacs, versus our kids who really had no clue how to steer or avoid being bumped into. It was very funny.

In the evening we had showers in a dark, cold shower, without a door, supervised by frogs. Jess became very unwell overnight. The outside temperature was not much below 30 degrees, and her fever rose to over 40 degrees. She refused to take panadol and then devoped severe croup which went on for two hours, instead of the usual half hour. It was quite frightening, especially as we didn't have phone reception and were unsure what the local medical services were. Greg and I spent much of the night fanning her and washing her, trying to keep her cool. She was a bit better in the morning, however we decided to skip our planned overnight camp site at Gunlom Falls in Kakadu and head for Katherine instead. The dirt road out of Arnhem Land is so badly corrugated and potholed that we sustained damage to both indoor and outdoor tables and other fixed fittings in the caravan. No wonder we were the only people bringing a caravan in!